


Haunting

by whichclothes



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-19
Updated: 2011-09-19
Packaged: 2017-10-23 21:16:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/255049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whichclothes/pseuds/whichclothes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Young William Pratt is haunted</p>
            </blockquote>





	Haunting

**Author's Note:**

> Incorporates angst_bingo prompts: phobias, emotional abuse,haunting, fear of being alone. Many thanks to my wonderful beta, silk_labyrinth.

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**Haunting**   
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**Title** : Haunting (1/1)  
 **Character:** William  
 **Rating:** PG  
 **Disclaimer** : I'm not Joss  
 **Summary:** Young William Pratt is haunted  
 **Author's Notes:** Incorporates angst_bingo prompts: phobias, emotional abuse,haunting, fear of being alone. Many thanks to my wonderful beta, silk_labyrinth.   


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HAUNTING   
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“William Ambrose Pratt, stop that at once!”

At the sudden shout, William startled and hunched his thin shoulders. He turned about very slowly to face his father’s looming figure. “Stop what, Papa?” he asked.

Hugh Pratt’s face went a shade darker. “You know perfectly well what, you worthless fool! Skulking about the bottom of the stairway like a simpleton. You were told to dress for dinner.”

“But … it is dark.”

“Of course it is dark, you ninny. It is half six already. Now go!”

William looked up the narrow, carpeted stairs and wavered nervously. He was afraid of the dark. He was afraid of a great many things, in fact. Even though he was aware that his fears were childish, he was afraid of heights and enclosed spaces and anything that buzzed—even flies—and boats and graveyards and mice. He was afraid of the bigger boys who teased him and hit him and sometimes pulled down his trousers and called him a molly. But most of all, he was afraid of his father, whose strap was quick and whose tongue was sharp.

His father did not fancy William’s hesitation. “Now!” he thundered. “You weak, sniveling little creature. How I was cursed with such useless spawn I will never understand. Go!”

So William went, moving up the steps on the tips of his shoes, as if that might permit him to go unnoticed by whatever lay in wait in the shadows. He heard his father stomp away, no doubt to terrorize the maids or the cook, but the upper floor was silent, with William’s footfalls muffled by the thick rug that ran the length of the corridor. His room was at the end, far from his father’s, which was good, but also far from his mother’s, which was not. He remembered with hot shame the fuss he’d made when he was forced to move from the nursery to the new room three years earlier. His father had called him a baby, an embarrassment to the family name. But William had yearned for the lost comfort of knowing his mother was on the other side of the wall. Now it sometimes seemed as if his room was as far from hers as darkest Africa.

The hallway was especially poorly lit, made worse by the disapproving ancestors glaring down at him from their portraits, and he should have been relieved to reach the sanctuary of his own room. It was a pleasant place, really—his mother had seen to that. His bed was comfortable and he had shelves full of books. During the day he could look out the window and down into the garden. He had even been permitted to keep a few toys, although he should have outgrown them by his twelfth year: a sack of colorful glass marbles, a painted wooden top, a set of lead soldiers. There were a pair of framed Landseer prints on the wall—a lion and a noble stag—anda comfortable chair with a writing table nearby.

But there was also a wardrobe, and it was haunted.

It was a massive affair, much too large for the room and fashioned of dark wood carved with complex shapes. It smelled strongly of mothballs. But what troubled William was his conviction that _something_ was inside the enormous thing, waiting for him. Something malevolent. The thing retreated into the depths of the furniture during the day, so that William could retrieve his clothing quickly but safely. In fact, he’d made a habit of setting out every morning whatever clothes he was likely to need during the day, just so that he wouldn’t have to rummage in the interior after dark. But when he went to bed at night he could feel the wardrobe looming nearby, and even if he hid completely under the blankets—which he was far too old to do—he knew that something had eased the wardrobe open just a bit and was watching him. 

On the few occasions when he was brave enough to peek in the direction of the wardrobe, he swore he could see the monster’s yellow eyes gleaming.

William kept his back to the wardrobe as he removed one set of clothing and pulled on another. He hated the tight, scratchy collar and it took ages for his fingers to fumble the many tiny buttons closed. When he was finally dressed to what he hoped would be his father’s satisfaction, he sprinted out of his room and down the hall, only slowing when he got to the staircase. His father punished him if he made too much noise on the stairs.

Until recently, William had been permitted to eat alone in the kitchen. Sometimes one of the maids ate with him, and that was nice. But on his most recent birthday he had been promoted to dining with his parents. Now he sat between them at the table as Hugh quizzed him on Greek verbs and Shakespeare’s tragedies and the War of the Spanish Succession, and when William was not quick enough or clever enough with his answers, Hugh called him lazy and an idiot and a disgrace.

On this night, like many others, William’s mother tried to distract her husband with talk of a portrait exhibition in South Kensington and news of the American Civil War. But Hugh drank too much wine, and his face grew redder and the abuse of his son louder, until William was forced to swallow his food past a thick lump in his throat.

It was with enormous relief that William eventually saw his father depart the house for an evening at his club.

Then came the pleasant bit, when William and his mother settled in the drawing room. He completed his schoolwork to the comforting click-clack of her knitting needles and her quiet humming. He drank tea with sugar and milk and she allowed him to have three cream biscuits instead of the usual two.

But when his bedtime arrived, she would not accompany him to his room; his father had expressly forbidden it. “You are coddling him,” Hugh had rumbled. “You have nearly ruined him already.” So William bent for a motherly kiss on his cheek and again crept up the stairs and down the hallway.

He’d perfected the art of slithering out of his clothing and into his nightshirt very quickly, and he already had the blankets pulled to his chin when one of the maids came to douse the light. He squeezed his eyes shut against the darkness and tried to fall asleep.

His grandfather’s maiden sister had died in this very room. That was long before William was born, but he had heard the servants gossiping about her death, and he knew his Grand Aunt Eudora Pratt was a thin, nervous-looking woman with a pointed chin and sad blue eyes. Her portrait hung in the corridor, on the wall opposite William’s bedroom door. Although it was possible that it was she who haunted the wardrobe, William doubted it. She didn’t look sinister enough.

In the oppressive silence of his bedroom, he was suddenly certain he’d heard a small noise, as though a door had been eased ajar. He bunched his hands into fists and shut his eyes so tightly he saw flashing colored lights. He had lately begun to doubt the existence of God, but he prayed anyway, in his head: _Don’t let it get me. Please, don’t let it get me,_ over and over again until the boundaries of consciousness grew fuzzy and he did not know if he was sleeping or awake. And in this uncertain territory he heard—or he thought he heard—the wardrobe swing wide open and heavy footsteps come treading his way.

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No, no, no, no, no   
_   
,    
William chanted silently. But the steps came closer, slowly, as if whoever was there meant to draw out the awful suspense as long as possible. When the visitor stopped, right beside the edge of the bed, William was suddenly afraid that he was going to disgrace himself even further by urinating in his bed. What would his father do to him then? How many times would Hugh strike him with the strap, how many ways would Hugh find to call him stupid and worthless and unwanted? William could clearly picture the flecks of spittle that would fly from his father’s lips, the wheezing little grunts his father would make as his arm came down again and again, the cold look of disdain and loathing he would see in his father’s eyes.

And suddenly the specter beside William’s bed was no longer so very frightening.

William breathed evenly for a few moments and then the footsteps retreated, the monster returning to the wardrobe. The wardrobe door shut with a thud.

William pushed the blankets away and walked confidently across the floor. He could barely see anything—just a hint of moonlight stole in around the edges of his curtains—but he could make out the bulky shape of the wardrobe, and he grabbed a door-handle and yanked the door open. He could see nothing at all inside, but he could sense the presence of something that waited.

“You don’t scare me,” William said.

A chuckle emanated from the depths of the wardrobe. “Finally decided to grow a pair, have we?” It was a man’s voice, the accent rougher than William was accustomed to, the tone amused.

“Go away,” William said. “You do not belong here.”

“No, no I don’t. But perhaps you don’t belong either, Willy boy.”

“Go _away_!”

Another raspy laugh. “Right then. A bloke can tell when he’s not wanted. I’ll be on my way. I’ll be back, though—one night when you do want me. When you ache to have me inside you, filling you, then I’ll be back. You’ll welcome me with open arms then, Willy boy, and we’ll never again be parted.” Yellow eyes flashed brightly in the back of the wardrobe, just for a second, and then they were gone. So was the specter—William was certain of that. Now the wardrobe contained only clothing.

William closed the door softly and padded back to bed. He pulled the blankets up tight as he began to shiver. But it wasn’t the cold that made him shake, nor was it fear. 

He shook with longing for the thing that had been in his wardrobe. 

Someday the thing that haunted him would return, William thought, and it would make him strong. Then William would inhabit the darkness and would become the one that others feared. No man would be his match—especially not middle-aged civil servants who drank too much and were cruel to their families. And with the yellow-eyed monster in his heart, William would never, ever be alone again.

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~~~fin~~~   
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End file.
